[TriLUG] Firewire Cards on Linux

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007, Daniel Bartholomew wrote:

> I'm thinking of putting a Firewire card into my Linux box (Ubuntu 6.10
> x86) and was wondering if anyone knew which brands were best supported
> and which brands I should avoid.

Initially (about 5yrs ago) not knowing what I was doing and 
expecting as many problems with firewire as there were with 
the early usb chipsets, I bought a Panasonic Pyro 3 DV PCI 
card which is touted as working (among others) in a Mac. I 
thought this a good start, since Mac was the one adopting 
firewire.

Later (about 3yrs ago) I contacted people through the linux 
1394 web page (have a good listing of cards known to work) 
to find that while there are many chipsets for usb, there is 
(or 3yrs ago, was) only a small number of firewire chipsets 
in use and linux handles most of them. So the important 
thing in looking up the card, is to figure the chipsets 
(there's lots more cards than chipsets). So I'd go for a 
card with a long established chipset.

Being thus emboldened I bought a generic type card from 
Intrex (I liked the usb/firewire combo, but as it turns out 
I wound up doing everything by usb and never did much with 
the firewire) and when I found the card worked, I bought a 
whole bunch. The boxes the devices came in weren't real 
helpful as to specs (chipsets) for the cards, and when I 
wanted another one later, I found when I got it home that it 
didn't work (not sure whether it was the firewire or the usb 
that didn't work), but Intrex were happy to swap it the next 
day for another which did turn out to work.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!